These results are important for several reasons. Firstly, they confirm the practical feasibility of using post-mortem control brain tissue to study the transcriptome of the human brain by array technology. Secondly, they show that microarrays can give reliable results over a wide range of RIN numbers (1–8.5) and pH measurements with drop off in array validity only being observed below brain pH 5.9. Thirdly, they show that the results from Affymetrix exon arrays are reproducible by other technologies, making it possible for database users to use the data generated with confidence.
